The Rangers’ unraveling began in the final second of the first period, when the Kings’ Jeff Carter rendered Madison Square Garden silent with a stunning, buzzer-beating goal, one that crossed the line with 0.7 seconds left. It continued through the ugly second period, when two early penalties led to one Los Angeles power-play goal and a late 3-on-2 rush led to the final indignity of what would be a 3-0 shutout. It was brought to its disappointing, eerily quiet end across the final four minutes, while uncrowned King Henrik Lundqvist was reduced to bench-warming spectator, no different than the disappointed fans in the stands.

“You want to win one. Win one in front of our own crowd,” Lundqvist said, the postgame layer of losing quiet once again buffering the Rangers’ locker room atmosphere. “That’s as far as we’re looking right now.”

The Rangers came home to get back in the series, but once again, against a powerful Kings attack and an impenetrable goaltending force, left a hockey arena on the wrong side of the final score.

The air in the building was gone long before they were.

The white towels that had waved so furiously during

John Amirante’s rendition of the national anthem sat in silent surrender, the full-throated roar of a crowd so brimming with anticipation when the night began reduced to desperate cheerleaders, the intermittent smatterings of “Let’s Go Rangers” struggling to become a chorus.

When the team gets back here Wednesday night, they do so on the official brink of elimination, only one loss away from the end of this dream of recreating 1994 magic.

Mark Messier, the primary alchemist behind that amazing championship run two decades ago, was back in the building Monday night, and like many of the Rangers fans there with him, wanted so much to believe the two overtime losses in Los Angeles meant the Rangers were as good as the Kings, just a little bit unluckier, and that they only needed that dose of home-ice comfort to make the difference.

If they could hang that close on the road, how could they not win at home?

“You’ve got be comfortable coming home and playing at any time during the regular season or playoffs, just the familiarity of being home, back in the rink you’re in all year long, that gives you the comfort,” Messier said. “But it doesn’t ensure you a win. You still have to go out and play a game that enables you to win.

“The fans can be a big part of that, but you also have to give the fans a reason to be a big part of it.”

That’s where the Rangers failed. With King Henrik playing like a mere mortal and his counterpart Jonathan Quick stopping everything that came his way, the Rangers never had a chance. When Carter fired a puck that flicked off the outstretched skate of defenseman Dan Girardi and sailed past Lundqvist’s glove, when instant replay could do nothing to dispute the puck crossing the line inside that final second, the silence in the Garden was deafening.

“I think it kicked off my steel,” said Girardi, victimized again by a bad bounce, one to go along with the flickering puck he turned over for the winning goal in Game 1. “Half an inch higher and that doesn’t hit me. That’s just how it’s going. But you can’t let a nick like that get you down.”

But these Rangers are down, and close to being out. Fans who’d waited 20 years and two road games to be in this position were muted, denied their chance to rally their troops, denied the desperate desire to embrace this team the way they did the one Messier played for, the one he and Mike Richter, Brian Leetch and Adam Graves made sure would always be remembered.

That’s how much was at stake Monday. After the cross-country heartbreak of two overtime losses, there was no question the Rangers needed to win to make this a series again, to “hold serve,” in the words of their coach Alain Vigneault.

“As close as a ‘must’ game as I think you can have,” Vigneault called it. “Until you face elimination, that’s as close as we can get. It’s the biggest game New York has had here in 20 years. I think our fans are as excited as we are.”
Twenty years.

“We were down 3-1 against Pittsburgh [in the second round] and rattled off five wins in a row,” Girardi said.

Twenty years the Rangers waited for this. Twenty years the city waited for this. Twenty years the fans waited for this.